My brave friend Peter rescues more children.

 Using his Kurdish connections, [Peter Galbraith] has helped get more than two dozen children of various nationalities out of [ISIS detention] camps… Over the course of a year, he made three trips to Syria to search [for two young boys]. On his third visit, in November 2022, camp officials brought [them] to meet him in a small office… After a DNA test proved their identities, the boys were transferred to an orphanage-like facility within the camps, where they were able to have weekly video calls with their grandparents in Minnesota.

They now live with their family in Minnesota. Their [repentant, cooperating] ISIS father will be in jail here for ten years.

“This was the misconduct of one individual and does not reflect the values, culture, or commitment of the dedicated faculty, staff, and leadership at Texas Southern University.”

Those who follow TSU know that the jailing, for eight years, of one of its law school deans, was hardly the thievery of one set of hands. The school’s always been pretty filthy, top to bottom.

Now in its [seventy-eighth] year, it has hardly known a time when its fiscal affairs were not in chaos, when its board of regents was not dysfunctional, when its graduation rate was not shockingly low…

The theft of scholarship money by a dean does in fact reflect the culture of TSU, a corrupt and dysfunctional school that should not exist.

America’s Memorial Day: When we leave behind many fallen to remember.

In Myrtle Beach, in Philadelphia, mass gatherings and rapid gunfire from weapons modified with gun switches guarantee many fellow Americans for us to memorialize.

Our family paintings have arrived at the National Museum in Gdansk!
ANOTHER mass shooting in Myrtle Beach!

Or twenty miles north; I’m figuring the local shooters moved this weekend’s fun away from Murder Beach proper cuz it’s crawling with cops.

This distance from the boardwalk, they were free to shoot eleven people. An impressive number, even by American standards.

*****************

UPDATE: Happened on a party boat! Did people jump into the water? And eleven shot because it’s hard to run away when you’re drunk, high, and on a boat.

Police are searching for “a motive.” Hm, hm, what could it be. Cram a bunch of drunks, several of whom are armed, on a boat. Motive would be, you know, someone pushed someone aside while reeling around trying not to fall over. BANGBANGBANG

ANOTHER UPDATE: When you go to Facebook, you get all kinds of video and commentary. Some say it was an argument. Some say it was a hate crime. Some say some people drowned. We’ll see.

AND ANOTHER: For all the fervid imaginings of Facebookers, it sounds as though our latest mass shooting was exactly what you’d expect: Too many drunk/high assholes packed into a closed space. Someone always seems to get pissed off (or just pissed) and start shooting everybody.

As Iranian public life devolves into farce…

… with anti-hijabis ignoring the law making veiling mandatory, and pro-hijabis screaming in the streets against the anti-hijabis, while also insisting that women, as per nonexistent divine command, should be far more veiled, the parts of the government that matter seem to have had enough.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf said on Sunday that the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has instructed the legislature not to enforce a contentious law mandating stricter hijab regulations.

“Although I had no intention of publicly declaring this in such explicit terms, the SNSC has formally written to the Parliament, directing us not to promulgate the hijab and chastity law for now,” Ghalibaf told lawmakers.

On the other side, the religious fanatics running Iran into the ground have decided that stealing citizens’ personal information, and setting up a Stasi-like system of everyone spying on and denouncing everyone else, is a great way of enforcing an unenforceable law.

“Does the Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice even have legal access to people’s personal data?” asked Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a former government spokesman and law professor, in a popular post on X.

But forget legal niceties! When God decrees hijabs and chadors for all, you gotta go there.

Caught in extensive research fraud, Harvard B-School Professor Francesca Gino immediately spat out big lawsuits against everyone who’d ever said boo to her.

As the suits are one by one dismissed, Gino herself is dismissed: Her tenure has been revoked. Plus she’s fired.

Off she goes, hissing and spitting all the way.

Happening now – a march through Central Warsaw…

… in support of pro-liberal democracy presidential candidate Rafał Trzaskowski.

The just-elected pro-democracy president of Romania, Nicușor Dan, is among the marchers.

Photo taken by Mr UD’s cousin, Adam Soltan. (Click on pic for a better image.)

Head to Toe Coverage of Pro-Hijab Militancy in Iran

Here at UD, we cover both anti-hijab and pro-hijab protests in Iran, where they put you in prison, or at least bankrupt you, for failing to wear the mandatory hijab.

[Photo Vahid Salemi/AP]

Here, enraged women eviscerate the government for failing to destroy the anti-hijabis, and, while we’re at it, we demand MORE VEILING YOU FOOLS YOU INFIDELS.

Why let women get away with a dinky little head doily? Make it black, make it thick, make it full body, baby!

However!

Tehran Governor Hossein Khosh-Eghbal said … that the [pro-hijab] demonstrations were “illegal” and warned that police would disperse any further protests held without permits.

lolololol

In his next film, all of his actresses will have had their genitals surgically removed.

An Iranian filmmaker offers his all-hijab all the time movie at Cannes, where, interestingly, all of the film’s actresses showed up hijabless.

And big thick black robeless! MOST immodest. I hope someone has reported them to the Chastity Law’s Morality Police.

**************************

Ah. That’s more like it.

‘“Displaying a weapon in public, especially from a moving vehicle, is an act that creates fear and jeopardizes the safety of our residents,” [Jeffery] Sutherland said.”‘

Summer comes to the Jersey Shore!

Background to Macron’s proposed ban on under-fifteens wearing hijabs.

 [T]here were over 1,900 reported cases of students challenging the values of the [French] Republic in 2023 alone — from refusing to attend biology lessons due to perceived “immorality,” to threats against teachers who discuss secularism, gender equality, or the Holocaust. A growing number of teachers report self-censoring in the classroom for fear of retribution.

And the problem is not confined to France. In Germany, several states have reported an uptick in Islamist-linked intimidation in schools. In 2022, a Berlin teacher went into hiding after receiving death threats for showing a satirical cartoon during a civic education lesson. In Sweden, a teacher in Malmö was assaulted after discussing LGBTQ rights in class. Even the UK is not immune: Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire found itself at the centre of a firestorm in 2021 when a teacher faced threats and had to go into hiding after showing images of the Prophet during a lesson.

These incidents are not isolated. They represent a systemic issue: the infiltration of radical Islamist ideologies into the educational environments of liberal democracies. Schools — once viewed as neutral spaces for the development of civic identity — are increasingly contested zones where the state’s authority is being tested and, at times, eroded.

‘“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body,” Harvard’s lawsuit says.’

And with another pen stroke, a judge has just halted the Trump administration’s ban on international students at Harvard.

Surely, like all dictators and would-be dictators, Trump knows that unless he figures out a way to destroy America’s independent judiciary he’s not going to get all the goodies he craves.

“That a Jewish university would elevate an elected official who is complicit in such abuses is both morally indefensible and deeply irresponsible.”

Well, the rhetoric’s grand for sure, but as UD reads the letter from fifty Yeshiva University faculty protesting the school’s bestowal of its highest honor on Elise Stefanik, she’s gotta ask the signers: Do you know where you teach?

Do you recall – it wasn’t long ago – that Bernard Madoff was your BOT‘s treasurer, Ezra Merkin an equally honored campus VIP, and to this day Ira Rennert and Zygi Wilf remain high-profile, influential, beloved, donors? Do you know that by far the largest bloc in America voting for Trump was orthodox Jews? Have you noticed that, right after the courts forced Yeshiva to allow a gay club, the school found a way to shut it down?

I mean so nu it’s always nice to protest, but why don’t you try getting a job at a reputable school?

Yet another article in Suicide Central Wyoming which piles cliche upon cliche until it’s a toppling tower of cliches but NEVER ONCE mentions the primary reason the state leads the nation in suicides:

GUNS.

Read this pathetic editorial up down over and out and you’ll never ever encounter even one mild parenthetical reference to all them guns.

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte